Marek Looking To Tackle Large RadeonSI Performance Bottleneck

[leipero]

Grat news, to be honest, i saw regression (on radeon, not radeonsi tho) in most things from mesa 17.0.0 to 17.0.2 (and 17.0.1), it's not FPS regression, but "smoothness" regression, probably hardware related, so reporting a problem without knowing what is the actual problem would be pointless. Otherwise, everything seems to be fine.

[duby229]

Grat news, to be honest, i saw regression (on radeon, not radeonsi tho) in most things from mesa 17.0.0 to 17.0.2 (and 17.0.1), it's not FPS regression, but "smoothness" regression, probably hardware related, so reporting a problem without knowing what is the actual problem would be pointless. Otherwise, everything seems to be fine.

Radeon and Amdgpu are kernel drivers, radeonsi is the mesa driver for both of them. Whether you use radeon or amdgpu for the kernel driver you are using radeonsi for the mesa driver if you have a GCN or newer GPU.

[bridgman]

Grat news, to be honest, i saw regression (on radeon, not radeonsi tho) in most things from mesa 17.0.0 to 17.0.2 (and 17.0.1), it's not FPS regression, but "smoothness" regression, probably hardware related, so reporting a problem without knowing what is the actual problem would be pointless. Otherwise, everything seems to be fine.

If it's repeatable it's probably worth reporting, even if all you can say is "going from <version> to <version> and running the following <apps> on <hardware> I see <whatever you are seeing>.

When you say "radeon not radeonsi" are you talking about one of the pre-GCN hardware generations (eg r300 or r600 drivers) or are you actually talking about the original "radeon" chips from 2001 ? I'm asking because only the r100 and rn50 chips (plus more recent server variants) actually use the "radeon" mesa driver.

[leipero]

If it's repeatable it's probably worth reporting, even if all you can say is "going from <version> to <version> and running the following <apps> on <hardware> I see <whatever you are seeing>.

When you say "radeon not radeonsi" are you talking about one of the pre-GCN hardware generations (eg r300 or r600 drivers) or are you actually talking about the original "radeon" chips from 2001 ? I'm asking because only the r100 and rn50 chips (plus more recent server variants) actually use the "radeon" mesa driver.

duby229

Yes I'm talking about radeon (pre GCN GPU's, specifically 6000 series). I did look at diffs between mesa 17.0.0 and mesa 17.0.x on freedesktop.org, couldn't see anything that would introduce such "problems", it could be that other packages created this, i have to investigate what the probelm actually is. Since i had similar problem on Windows few years back, It is probably some hardware problem (GPU-MOBO). User level tripple buffer control is very useful thing to have (for testing also).

[duby229]

duby229

Yes I'm talking about radeon (pre GCN GPU's, specifically 6000 series). I did look at diffs between mesa 17.0.0 and mesa 17.0.x on freedesktop.org, couldn't see anything that would introduce such "problems", it could be that other packages created this, i have to investigate what the probelm actually is. Since i had similar problem on Windows few years back, It is probably some hardware problem (GPU-MOBO). User level tripple buffer control is very useful thing to have (for testing also).

In that case the kernel driver is called radeon and the mesa driver is called r600g.

[eydee]

duby229

Yes I'm talking about radeon (pre GCN GPU's, specifically 6000 series). I did look at diffs between mesa 17.0.0 and mesa 17.0.x on freedesktop.org, couldn't see anything that would introduce such "problems", it could be that other packages created this, i have to investigate what the probelm actually is. Since i had similar problem on Windows few years back, It is probably some hardware problem (GPU-MOBO). User level tripple buffer control is very useful thing to have (for testing also).

Might sound trivial, but have you checked temps? Some overheating can also cause stuttering long before it would cause crashes and instability.

[duby229]

Might sound trivial, but have you checked temps? Some overheating can also cause stuttering long before it would cause crashes and instability.

A can of air and a damp cloth to clean the fan blades might just be the solution. But usually the heatsink will be visibly clogged up and you'll be able to look at it to tell if that's the problem.

[leipero]

Might sound trivial, but have you checked temps? Some overheating can also cause stuttering long before it would cause crashes and instability.

Ofc., it might as well not be a mesa problem since other packages updated..., and I would not want to repeat same mistake of reporting something before making sure it's a problem of mesa.

duby229
Thanks, internal names are a bit confusing, i tought R600 is for chip name, not for Northern Islands chips. My approach was (obviously invalid) that all pre-GCN GPU's use radeon driver, S.Islands use radeonsi, and newer AMDGPU, but looking at x.org website, it seems that all use radeon kernel driver, except V.Islands+. So my bad in naming.

[geearf]

Thanks, internal names are a bit confusing, i tought R600 is for chip name, not for Northern Islands chips. My approach was (obviously invalid) that all pre-GCN GPU's use radeon driver, S.Islands use radeonsi, and newer AMDGPU, but looking at x.org website, it seems that all use radeon kernel driver, except V.Islands+. So my bad in naming.

You're confusing kernel drivers and mesa drivers:

r600 was the name of the mesa driver, probably because it supported these chips, and then it was extended to other cards as long as it made sense.
The g in there is for gallium, as first it was a classic mesa driver as Intel's, and then rewritten as a Gallium3D driver.

radeonsi is the new mesa driver (also a Gallium3D one) that supports newer cards.

As Bridgman said, there's older mesa drivers for older cards.


You already got the kernel drivers so let's skip that

[bridgman]

In that case the kernel driver is called radeon and the mesa driver is called r600g.

Right. Strictly speaking we call it r600g on Phoronix forums to distinguish it from the old non-Gallium3D drivers, but since they no longer exist we should probably just call it r600 to match what we have in the source tree.

leipero, if it helps you can look in the Mesa source tree and see the actual drivers:

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/me...allium/drivers

IIRC the r300, r600 and radeonsi folders hold actual drivers; the radeon folder holds common code that is shared between them.